I try to be agnostic when it comes to brands and generally buy what's reviewed well and priced right. Seagate is where I differ on that outlook.My dad was the senior line engineer for the Seagate Anaheim fab from open to close - he long ago told me not to buy Seagate ATA drives. (non-SAS/SCSI - it was pretty cool growing up being the only one on the block with a 10K cheetah array in his desktop)

That advice has served me fine. I have about 25 WD drives of various vintages that are all running fine, and one single solitary Barracuda LP 2TB I got for a great price (direct from Amazon) that died a month after I bought it. Have yet to RMA because best case scenario I'll get another Seagate drive back

I seem to see a lot problems listed in the newegg comments on many of the cheaper drives.

Wish I could afford enterprise level drives. 5 year warranty etc.

That online auction site is a not-so-bad place to pick up older generation SCSI drives. You can get 15k rpm 75GB units for $10-20 each. These drives were all built to the very highest standards of the time and are still pretty damn quick. You need a proper controller, obviously, as well as bigger, slower space for stuff other than the OS and core applications.

This problem was caused by Windows, which was created by Microsoft Corporation.

It's always nice to see a good deal posted in the forums, but it's a problem when you run into quality issues concerning the things your recommend.

A quick dig into this part's ratings on Amazon show many people having the drive die within the first month of use- that is, it worked out of the box, and then failed, for whatever reason.

I looked because I was interested in something like this- large, portable, fast (enough) storage; but reviews like those turn me away immediately.

While I'm not saying your conclusion that this Seagate external drive might be a bit of a risky buy is wrong, I'd recommend looking at the reviews of the bare drive itself. It does so happen that in this case, at least on Newegg, the reported failure rates for the bare drive is also a bit on the high side, but still of somewhat smaller proportion than those for the external drives on Amazon.

When the mechanical HDD prices first spiked, I purchased a relatively cheap external drive that was getting fairly high reported rates of failure. However, the bare drive inside did not share this trend in the customer reviews. When I got the drive, the problem became apparent. It was a 7200 RPM drive packaged in a cheapo plastic enclosure with no active cooling or room for air circulation. It's almost certain that most of these failures must have been due to overheating. I immediately removed the drive and it has been working fine in a desktop ever since.

It's always nice to see a good deal posted in the forums, but it's a problem when you run into quality issues concerning the things your recommend.

A quick dig into this part's ratings on Amazon show many people having the drive die within the first month of use- that is, it worked out of the box, and then failed, for whatever reason.

I looked because I was interested in something like this- large, portable, fast (enough) storage; but reviews like those turn me away immediately.

While I'm not saying your conclusion that this Seagate external drive might be a bit of a risky buy is wrong, I'd recommend looking at the reviews of the bare drive itself. It does so happen that in this case, at least on Newegg, the reported failure rates for the bare drive is also a bit on the high side, but still of somewhat smaller proportion than those for the external drives on Amazon.

When the mechanical HDD prices first spiked, I purchased a relatively cheap external drive that was getting fairly high reported rates of failure. However, the bare drive inside did not share this trend in the customer reviews. When I got the drive, the problem became apparent. It was a 7200 RPM drive packaged in a cheapo plastic enclosure with no active cooling or room for air circulation. It's almost certain that most of these failures must have been due to overheating. I immediately removed the drive and it has been working fine in a desktop ever since.

I see your point here, but if you're taking the drive out of the enclosure then you could just have well bought the bare drive instead, unless this drive represents a bargain in comparison. Then, if you really wanted to use the drive as intended, you'd have to purchase a USB3 enclosure for it, adding to the cost.

My point was really just to remind people to look at the reviews. This drive has a very high failure rate, and in my opinion shouldn't have been mentioned here as it is itself not recommended.

My point was really just to remind people to look at the reviews. This drive has a very high failure rate, and in my opinion shouldn't have been mentioned here as it is itself not recommended.

I don't necessarily agree. First of all, I've heard that a much higher percentage of people that experience a problem write a review than do those that have a trouble free experience. Second, if it's a good deal then let people read the reviews themselves. Third, but really this point should be first: ALWAYS HAVE A BACKUP. Any model of drive can fail, from an Intel SSD to and enterprise SCSI drive, and on the other hand there are probably still a lonesome few Deskstar 75 GXP drives out there that are miraculously still running. I've personally seen enterprise drives fail years earlier than consumer drives that have run 24/7. So the big advice is: always have a backup and be ready for failure, and if you've done that then the day the failure comes you might actually find yourself grinning because you were prepared. That's been the case for me, at least.

BTW, was the original post supposed to have a link to something or did I miss the link or what?

I try to be agnostic when it comes to brands and generally buy what's reviewed well and priced right. Seagate is where I differ on that outlook.My dad was the senior line engineer for the Seagate Anaheim fab from open to close - he long ago told me not to buy Seagate ATA drives. (non-SAS/SCSI - it was pretty cool growing up being the only one on the block with a 10K cheetah array in his desktop)

That advice has served me fine. I have about 25 WD drives of various vintages that are all running fine, and one single solitary Barracuda LP 2TB I got for a great price (direct from Amazon) that died a month after I bought it. Have yet to RMA because best case scenario I'll get another Seagate drive back

The plural of anecdote is not data. No offense to your dad, but I'm sure I could find WD, Hitachi, or anyone else's employees saying the same thing. For a counterpoint anecdote, I had lots of problems with WD drives back around the 120-500GB era, and have been using mostly Seagate since, without issues.

These days, I buy whatever hits the price/GB mark I like, when I'm buying, and keep backups.

I try to be agnostic when it comes to brands and generally buy what's reviewed well and priced right. Seagate is where I differ on that outlook.My dad was the senior line engineer for the Seagate Anaheim fab from open to close - he long ago told me not to buy Seagate ATA drives. (non-SAS/SCSI - it was pretty cool growing up being the only one on the block with a 10K cheetah array in his desktop)

That advice has served me fine. I have about 25 WD drives of various vintages that are all running fine, and one single solitary Barracuda LP 2TB I got for a great price (direct from Amazon) that died a month after I bought it. Have yet to RMA because best case scenario I'll get another Seagate drive back

The plural of anecdote is not data. No offense to your dad, but I'm sure I could find WD, Hitachi, or anyone else's employees saying the same thing. For a counterpoint anecdote, I had lots of problems with WD drives back around the 120-500GB era, and have been using mostly Seagate since, without issues.

These days, I buy whatever hits the price/GB mark I like, when I'm buying, and keep backups.

Well, of course it's anecdotal. I like to think a guy who saw the processes in play had a little more credibility than most, though. I did get to tour the plating facilities in Mexicali and saw some things I wasn't supposed to see that made me not buy any Seagate drives for a long, long time Then the first one I bought after that break was the LP that died in a month.

Sort of like the pizza place right by my house that I have to keep remembering makes people sick when I'm tempted by its proximity.

My dad was the senior line engineer for the Seagate Anaheim fab from open to close - he long ago told me not to buy Seagate ATA drives. (non-SAS/SCSI - it was pretty cool growing up being the only one on the block with a 10K cheetah array in his desktop)

The plural of anecdote is not data. No offense to your dad, but I'm sure I could find WD, Hitachi, or anyone else's employees saying the same thing.

Well, of course it's anecdotal. I like to think a guy who saw the processes in play had a little more credibility than most, though. I did get to tour the plating facilities in Mexicali and saw some things I wasn't supposed to see that made me not buy any Seagate drives for a long, long time Then the first one I bought after that break was the LP that died in a month.

Sort of like the pizza place right by my house that I have to keep remembering makes people sick when I'm tempted by its proximity.[/quote]

I'm sorry, I was unclear in exactly the way I feared.

Your dad was right. My point is, none of the others are any better, and several are much worse.

My dad was the senior line engineer for the Seagate Anaheim fab from open to close - he long ago told me not to buy Seagate ATA drives. (non-SAS/SCSI - it was pretty cool growing up being the only one on the block with a 10K cheetah array in his desktop)

The plural of anecdote is not data. No offense to your dad, but I'm sure I could find WD, Hitachi, or anyone else's employees saying the same thing.

Well, of course it's anecdotal. I like to think a guy who saw the processes in play had a little more credibility than most, though. I did get to tour the plating facilities in Mexicali and saw some things I wasn't supposed to see that made me not buy any Seagate drives for a long, long time Then the first one I bought after that break was the LP that died in a month.

Sort of like the pizza place right by my house that I have to keep remembering makes people sick when I'm tempted by its proximity.

I'm sorry, I was unclear in exactly the way I feared.

Your dad was right. My point is, none of the others are any better, and several are much worse.

If you're at all curious (and maybe I will post someday about some other things I saw) they sent him down to the plating facility because of some yield problems after final assembly. There was some mixup and a bunch of rejected platters were getting mated in subassemblies somehow bypassing 3 QC steps. This was also the time my pop learned that 60 kph != 60 mph, and yes, he could pay the fine right there

I was too young to take pictures as this was back in the 90's. I was lucky growing up that I had a dad always involved in tech that I found interesting...before Seagate, he worked for Alcoa who engineered some processor packaging for Intel, and somewhere I have an early (unused configuration) CPGA packaged 5v Pentium 60 that's cut away to reveal some of the inside.

A few things mentioned in thread...I took the drive out so I am "less" likely to have the same failure rate as an enclosure is.I stiil have the usb 3.0 enclosure to use if needed (in a much easier to cool state)

Everyone should alway read the reviews before making a purchase and decide ifthe risks/benefits are worth it.

I did look at the 5 year 2 TB Western Digtal drives... $300 approx.$150 per TB is out of my league. I'll take my chances with $43 per TB.(with backups!)

Seems like Western and Seagate are buying everyone else up.Choices are fewer and fewer.And every company seems to run into problems now and then.

Seagate is where I differ on that outlook. My dad was the senior line engineer for the Seagate Anaheim fab from open to close....I was too young to take pictures as this was back in the 90's.

So these would have been, what, 800MB (yes, with an "M") drives destined for installation in somebody's Pentium 166, back when there were still about seven or eight discrete hard drive vendors?

I don't mean to be rude, but your experiences from back then, while doubtless real, have nothing to do with the current state of the hard drive market or its manufacturing technologies. A lot has changed in the intervening 15-20 years, starting with the fact that Seagate's Anaheim and Mexicali manufacturing facilities were closed way back in 2000, and their sins are dead and buried with them, since the capital equipment is obsolete and has long been recycled, the employees have since moved elsewhere, and the drives of that era are scrapped or sitting idle in some computer nerd's junk drawer. Nearly all of Seagate's hard drive manufacturing was consolidated in Ireland thereafter, and subsequently went to Southeast Asia and China, just like everybody else.

As of today, if you buy a hard disk drive on the open market, regardless of actual brand or configuration (internal, external, SATA, USB), one way or another it is either a Seagate or a Western Digital, manufactured and assembled in Asia, and using most of the same upstream supply chain vendors (Hutchinson, Nidec). The only other independent brand player in that market is Toshiba, which deals almost exclusively in OE contracts.

FWIW I have used drives from nearly all of the major vendors since the late 1990s and still have more than a half dozen functional Seagates ranging from 80GB to 500GB, including at least four from a bulk RMA lot that were probably recertified but haven't caused any trouble.

If you try to say that you are 100% brand agnostic, you're lying. Everyone is biased.That being said, I had an excellent source that gave me advice that served me well for many years. I rarely had a WD die on me, and that's about all I bought. All the dying IBM Deathstars (yes, I know WD rebranded some IBM drives - I avoided them) weren't a problem for me because I listened to what was happening in the industry and didn't rush to buy when a new model or tech came out. Same with Seagate, it wasn't remotely just my pop's advice that kept me not purchasing their drives. I avoided the 'cuda firmware fiasco and all the dying Seagates, and I'm still pretty sure what happened to Seagate has never happened on that scale with any other major manufacturer. Anecdotal information in conjunction with other facts is not useless, it's another usable point of data for consideration.

I know when the Anaheim fab closed. Doesn't mean the company or its practices improved after that date.

If you try to say that you are 100% brand agnostic, you're lying. Everyone is biased.

Yeah, I got me some healthy, well-developed, and IMO well-earned hate for OCZ. If you say we're just considering spinning hard disks, though, I carry no prejudices. I think you're conflating favoritism with experience when you talk about "bias".

I do not play favorites, and have no preferred HDD brand. I do have brands which performed well or disappointed me personally, but my sample size is too small to assign long-term bias as a result.

I buy what hard disks give my desired convergence of GB/$/warranty length/performance. The name on the label means nothing, if the other items have been considered.

(Edit: quote fix)

Last edited by Forge on Tue May 29, 2012 2:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I see your point here, but if you're taking the drive out of the enclosure then you could just have well bought the bare drive instead, unless this drive represents a bargain in comparison. Then, if you really wanted to use the drive as intended, you'd have to purchase a USB3 enclosure for it, adding to the cost.

My point was really just to remind people to look at the reviews. This drive has a very high failure rate, and in my opinion shouldn't have been mentioned here as it is itself not recommended.

Yeah, in that instance, I wanted a bare drive, but due to the price spike, box stores selling external drives were behind on raising prices. Essentially I bought the external drive for $80, when the bare drive alone would have been about $150.